With a Mac it's easy to copy a list of files in a folder to a text document, but difficult on Windows. Here is a way to do it. In the command prompt type the name of the folder you want a list of and then the file you want to write the list to. So in this case I get the contents of "temp" and write it to a file called "filelist.txt".

Here's how:

dir C:temp > C:filelist.txt

It's that simple. here is what i got:

Directory of C:temp

04/13/2004 01:52 PM <DIR>
.
04/13/2004 01:52 PM <DIR> ..

03/12/2004 12:39 AM 1,343,488 01929_comics-2 .04.mp3

08/19/1998 11:25 AM 47,124 ALABAS.TTF

08/18/2003 01:29 PM <DIR> rasterproxies

03/10/2004 02:54 PM 126 test-export.tab

03/10/2004 02:52 PM 126 test-export.tab~

03/31/2004 07:15 PM 144 test2.tab

10/23/2003 04:28 PM <DIR> tm

10/23/2003 04:24 PM 196,781 tm.zip

6 File(s) 1,587,789 bytes

4 Dir(s) 12,923,981,824 bytes free

If you want a simple list of the names of the files in the folder without the date, time, size, or the directories listed, you can type:

dir /a-h /b > C:filelist.txt

Another command for creating a file list is:

dir /a /-p /o:gen >filelisting.txt

This comes from an O'Reilly hack page that also explains how to make file listing part of the right-click, context menu for folders so that by right clicking on a folder you can automatically generate a filelist for that folder. The page is at:

However, I found that their technique does not quite work the way they describe. For one, as many users complained, their batch script fails to open the filelist after creating it. Secondly, it gives the dates, times, etc for all files and directories, instead of just listing their names. Thirdly, I also found that it did not give the file list for the folder that was right-clicked on but for its parent. So, I modified the batch script as follows.

echo off

cd %1

dir /a-h /b /-p /o:gen >filelisting.txt

filelisting.txt

cd ..

echo on

Their basic instructions for creating it as a right-click context link is as follows:

Create the above file in Notetab

Save in the C:/WINDOWS folder as a ANSI file type with the name filelist.bat

In Windows Explorer choose Tools menus, Folder Options

Choose the File Types Tab

Choose the Folder type

Click the Advanced Button

Click the New Button

Under the Action box put in "Create File Listing"

Use the Browse button to located the "filelist.bat" file

Click OK to close all windows

Warning! : This adds an entry in the Windows registry. To remove the right-click, file list option is a more complicated process requiring the use of Window's RegEdit program. Instructions for that can be found at the same O'Reilly page listed above.